Home router/firewall choice

[Tim Casey 3]

What's your home router setup?

When I search for wifi, I'm amazed how many people use gear provided by their cable companies. I've always supplied my own equipment. It changes over time. Presently for my external router I use gear from untangle. It's pretty decent, but the subscription is pricy and I'm looking to go to an open solution, maybe pfsense. 

[james mckinlay 116]

44 minutes ago, Tim Casey said:

What's your home router setup?

When I search for wifi, I'm amazed how many people use gear provided by their cable companies. I've always supplied my own equipment. It changes over time. Presently for my external router I use gear from untangle. It's pretty decent, but the subscription is pricy and I'm looking to go to an open solution, maybe pfsense. 

have a play with https://opnsense.org/ and https://pi-hole.net/

 

[Thomas V Fischer 6]

I've not tried opnsense but it is a fork of pfSense which I've been using for years. Works really well and you can put it on one of these NUCs or other mini-PC. 

However if you want something more commercial, I highly recommend the ubiquiti security gateway and associated additional network components.

[RT Hatfield 4]

I use a Mikrotik Routerboard (I think a RB2011iL-IN) with a Linksys (I think) cable modem that's just a modem and doesn't bundle anything else. I run DNS and DHCP from a Pine64 running Pi-Hole, use the firewall and DHCP client on the Mikrotik, and I've got a big D-Link 32-port switch to supplement the Mikrotik's 5 gigabit ports

[Ben Fallon 4]

Something I generally recommend for home users that aren’t technically savvy.  Comes with unlimited installs of their highest tier AV solution for both computer and mobile platforms and helps secure devices that can’t run its own AV (IoT, etc.): Bitdefender Box2

I personally prefer something running pfsense and am hoping they will port it over to arm some day but I’ll toss one of these up in a pinch.

[Tim Casey 3]

On 9/8/2019 at 1:37 PM, Ben Fallon said:

Something I generally recommend for home users that aren’t technically savvy.  Comes with unlimited installs of their highest tier AV solution for both computer and mobile platforms and helps secure devices that can’t run its own AV (IoT, etc.): Bitdefender Box2

I personally prefer something running pfsense and am hoping they will port it over to arm some day but I’ll toss one of these up in a pinch.

Ben, thanks! How does this product work? I see it needs your wifi password and the credentials for your router/firewall.

I started another thread on this, but I found this add-on product that actually mtms your whole network with ARP. http://www.firewalla.com.

 

[Ben Fallon 4]

@Tim Casey it’s a full fledged WiFi router on its own if you choose to use it that way.  Otherwise, if you don’t want to disrupt current operations, you just make it your gateway in your current DHCP scope and send all your traffic through it and it will forward to your primary ISP router (least secure setup).  The reason for the side-by-side setup requesting user name and password is because they built in an autoconfig routine for home users that may not know how to reconfigure DHCP on their home router themselves.  Admittedly, I have not actually seen this work (at least not on any of the Verizon routers).  I personally plug the WAN port of the Box2 into one of the LAN ports on the ISP router and let the Box2 handle all the wireless and security.  In the box, it’s doing light weight vulnerability scanning of any device that connects to it.  For any endpoint that you install the included Bitdefender Total Security on, it integrates itself so you can get real time alerting for viruses, someone browsing to malicious web sites, devices running known vulnerable firmware versions, devices using default admin passwords, etc.  I wish there was more granular control over the Box but for a set it and forget it home solution, I find it the most convenient.  Pair that with the unlimited Bitdefender Total Security installs and you got a pretty good bargain.

 

Here’s an ok write up on TechAdvisor though I’ve seen better:

Tech Advisor Review

Edited September 11, 2019 by Ben Fallon
Added context